Connecting a Newgen Medical treadmill to Home Assistant, motor replacement, Raspberry Pi speed sensors, etc.?

Last Updated on January 28, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org

We suggest a new project for Home Assistant home gyms.Do treadmills not belong to the house sensors, we could monitor treadmill speed and distance in Home Assistant. Unfortunately, motor control of treadmills is often very poor, as with this example of a Newgen Medical treadmill:

Issues with Newgen Medical Treamills and how they could be resolved (for walking meditation)

We suggest to

1. replace the motor
2. add a new treadmill motor controller
3. add a Rasperry Pi seed sensor

https://gallochri.com/2020/05/universal-treadmill-speed-sensor-for-zwift-with-ant-stick-and-raspberry-pi/

4. Now we have all the sensors and the motors together
5. We need a software to control speed, and ajust and monitor for instance in Home Assistant

There are already quiet a lot of sensors which have Home Assistant integrations, among those also sports sensors. Therefore we think a treadmill would fit well to Home Assistant. And in general an open platform where sports sensors as well as other physiolgical sensors are integrated would be highly desirable. Xiaomi treadmills are already integrated in Home Assistant:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/xiaomi-treadmill-walkingpad-integration/204713/13

But according to our own little experience, for instance a Newgen Medical with a new motor would be better, since the Xiaomi treadmills, especially the foldable ones, are not very well built and also the motor is not very strong. If we look at scientific papers, we did hardly find any high quality studies which use treadmills which are less solid built than curved treadmills from WOODWAY. But these devices start from 5 000 USD. We therefore think building such devices by ourselves is worth it.